WALTER CRONXITE dons his Panama hat, khaki shorts and espadrilles to track down the council’s £200,000 CEO on her annual spring break to the South of France, all funded by Croydon Council Tax-payers

With Westfield delayed indefinitely, Fairfield Halls at least £11million over budget, and her house-building company still to deliver its first new home after four years, Jo Negrini is now desperately trying to cover-up details of the lack of “affordable housing” provision by publicly funded Brick by Brick.

The efforts at secrecy have seen council officials effectively ordered to break the law in order to withhold information which should be in the public domain.

Negrini, Croydon Council’s £200,000 per year chief executive, is “not in the office this week” according to the junior staffer left to answer her phone in Fisher’s Folly this morning.

That undoubtedly means that Negrini has jetted off to Cannes for her annual beano on the sunny Cote d’Azur at MIPIM, the international property speculators conference, also known as a “Booze and Hookerfest”.

MIPIM is what council leader Tony Newman in the past, before Labour won control of the Town Hall, called “a junket”.

“What’s she gone there for?” one councillor asked this weekend. “What’s she got to offer the Russian and Chinese property magnates? Discounted weekends at the Croydon Park Hotel?”

Unfortunately, Inside Croydon is as yet unable to report the detail of who will comprise the Croydon delegation from Negrini’s extensive team at Fisher’s Folly, or who is accompanying them from their public relations spin doctors, such as Grey Label, and their “partners”, including Croydon BID, since the council has stubbornly failed to respond to our Freedom of Information request seeking the size of the council delegation and the costs they are incurring.

But Inside Croydon has discovered two other, egregious examples where the council has deliberately ignored the strict requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and withheld or delayed providing public information – in one instance after a request from an elected councillor.

Robert Ward is the Conservative councillor for Selsdon and Addington Village. Back in January, he submitted an FoI request about the expected costs of the Fairfield Halls refurbishment, which is being overseen by Negrini’s housebuilders, Brick by Brick, and is running at least 15 months late.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, local authorities such as Croydon have up to 20 working days in which to provide responses to requests. By law, Ward was due his answer on February 20.

The delay in providing its response meant that the vital information was not available and so no questions could be asked at key Town Hall public meetings and scrutiny committee earlier in February. Effectively, council officials had managed to gag councillors – the elected representatives of the Council Tax-payers who are ultimately footing the bill for the Fairfield Halls refurbishment – by denying them this information.

The official reason given by the council when Ward questioned the delay was “this is with our press team to review and sign off the response”.

Now Ward is not a journalist, and there is nothing in the FoI Act that suggests that council press officers have any authority to overrule the law and delay the delivery of proper and reasonable enquiries about the spending of millions of pounds of public money.

“It was a clear and calculated piece of news management by the council to avoid awkward questions at public meetings,” a Katharine Street source told Inside Croydon today. “It looks as if they didn’t want to expose Brick by Brick’s Colm Lacey to questions about the mismanagement of the Fairfield refurbishment when he was in front of the scrutiny committee.”

There is a further example of the council deliberately breaking the law over FoI, in relation to a detailed requested submitted on behalf of this website over the building provision of Brick by Brick.

We also asked for details of the “developers’ dividends” – Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy payments – being made for each site.

The council, by law, was supposed to provide that data by February 15.

To date, it has delivered nothing. The response is close to one month overdue. But the council admits it does have the information. The delay was referred to the council’s legal team last month for review. The council’s senior legal officer is Jacqueline Harris-Baker, known to be a close colleague of Negrini.

According to one helpful council official, “The reason for delay is the press office have asked us to clarify the response with the service and we envision this being with you in the next few days.” That was a month ago. Since when, nada.

Of course, Croydon Council’s press office has no powers to delay or withhold information requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The council’s internal review – run by the council – has to run its course before the matter can be raised as a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner.

But in the meantime, potentially enlightening information about the way Brick by Brick is spending hundreds of millions of pounds of public money under a Labour-run council is being withheld from the public.

As one Labour councillor said this weekend, “We were elected on a manifesto commitment to be the most open and transparent council ever. And then you get this. It makes the council look shifty and secretive, as if we’ve got something to hide.

“I’d be interested to know who authorised the withholding of this information in this way.”

ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: For two consecutive years, 2017 and 2018, Inside Croydon has been the source for two award-winning nominations in Private Eye magazine’s annual celebration of civic cock-ups

In 2018, Inside Croydon had 1.6million pages viewed by more than half a million unique visitors

If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or what to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com

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About insidecroydon

News, views and analysis about the people of Croydon, their lives and political times in the diverse and most-populated borough in London.
Based in Croydon and edited by Steven Downes. To contact us, please email inside.croydon@btinternet.com

7 Responses to Negrini jets off to Cannes as Brick by Brick cover-up continues

So Jo and her brilliant PR team at Grey Label are about to set the cote d’azur alight again with the fantastic development opportunities that are available in Croydon. As property prices sink and the hope of a retail beacon to attract investors goes up in smoke her plans look like they were created on a back of an envelope. The only type of dodgy clowns she is probably likely to attract at this expenses binge are the ones that fill such manila envelopes and never keep receipts.

That was something we didn’t want to go into in this piece. There’s actually at least two answers, one of them for the majority group, the other for the minority group at the Town Hall. And then there’s Cllr Robert Ward, who probably didn’t realise that he could have written to the council official responsible and be deliberately ignored for more than a month.

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News, views and analysis about the people of Croydon, their lives and political times in the diverse and most-populated borough in London.
Based in Croydon and edited by Steven Downes. To contact us, please email inside.croydon@btinternet.com